1. Come on, people! Leave a comment and enter a drawing to win a copy of Kimberlee Conway Ireton's new book,
Cracking Up: A Postpartum Faith Crisis. Do not think for a minute you have to be a mother or even female to appreciate the brilliance of her work. I've already bought two copies to give away; help me to buy another one!
2. Let me share some of my favorite quotes:
But in this dark season, I do not want a God who humbly meets me in brokenness. I want a God who exercises enemy-annihilating power.... I want God to obliterate the cancer that is eating Michaela's bone marrow. I want God to eradicate my pregnancy-induced queasiness--both the physical and the emotional kind. I want God to make an agent love my novel as much as I do, to make a publisher love it, and readers, too. I want God to show up with power and might, to raise His victorious right hand and for all to be well. (19)
'[J]oy sounds to our postmodern ears like an emotion, something you feel, whereas celebration is something you do. And since you can't change how or what you feel--it's not like you can force yourself to feel joy--it might be better to focus on what you do, on how you're actually living, rather than what you're feeling or not feeling.' (60)
How do I hold those things in tension? The goodness of my life, the many gifts I have, and the fact that I still find my life so difficult? And the more sobering fact that it could easily be so much harder? And the horrible reality that even if my life is good, others' lives aren't good in the same way? (194)
3. To encourage my legion of blog readers to read Kimberlee's new book, I will give away
one copy of
Cracking Up to a randomly selected person
who leaves a comment at the end of this post between now and Sunday night, November 3rd. Deadline extended until 10 pm Eastern. It will arrive on your doorstep from Amazon as soon as possible after that time.
4. Halloween pictures, if you missed them on Facebook:
Miranda was Tinker Bell and Alex had no name for his costume; he just wanted a purple mask. He wanted a purple hoodie to go with it, but no body makes a plain, unembellished purple hoodie for kids. At least, no one that Google knows of.
5. I'm still working my way through books by Mary Balogh. I've read book one of the Bedwyn sextet, books 1-3 of the Huxtable quintet and 3 of the 4 books from the Simply quartet. According to Goodreads, I read 11 Balogh books in October. Libraries are wonderful.
6. I forgot until Wednesday night that Marshall will be in Washington, D.C., at the
LISA conference all of next week; he leaves tomorrow afternoon. And, as all NJ families know, this is
NJEA week so kids are only in school on Monday and Wednesday. My parents are supposed to return late Tuesday from San Diego, so I won't be totally on my own, and Marshall's mother will help me out Monday night so Miranda and I can go to dance class. Still, it is a daunting prospect, even though we probably won't have much homework for the week.
7. Still haven't managed to go to the movies or update my movie list for 2013. Too busy reading. Maybe next week.
And
Jen is back this week.
